Bon voyage Alice Blue Review

With today’s twenty-seventh and final issue, Alice Blue Review goes into that good dust of cultural shutdown. I could tell you everyone who’s in this last issue, but the whole fun of these things has always been making your way over and meeting all sorts of new names.

Alice Blue has long been one of my favorite online literary magazines, and I’m happy that their gone-ness doesn’t mean you can’t still ruffle through the archives and read everything they’ve ever shined a home on. Many cheers to Amber Nelson, Sarah Gallien, and Will Gallien for the sweet work they’ve done. Here’s Sarah’s final editor’s note, which I think sums it up swell:

Oh man. Well. You start a journal for the same reason you start a band, right? Because you aren’t getting enough of what you love out there. And when we started ten years ago, we felt necessary, vital. The internet was wide-open (early Millennials know, I won’t explain). We built from solicitation, from friends, made what we couldn’t fill, and quickly you all found us. All you stun-brilliant writers, you sharp-sharp readers—lovers of small difficult things. We were one of many writers’ first publications back then—the first, even. And we still are. We still do that. And this year we’ve published some of the best pieces I’ve read all year. But it’s different. Each time I uploaded a new piece, I knew, even if we hadn’t, someone would have. Someone would have published these pieces. All of them. We aren’t necessary anymore. Isn’t that beautiful? It is. It’s the best of all possible outcomes. The sweetest kind of obsolescence. What a world! What a time to be alive! I’m not crying, you’re crying! No—what? Stop it!

Mike Young is the author of three books: Sprezzatura (2014, poems), Look! Look! Feathers (2010, stories), and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (2010, poems). He publishes the free online/print literary magazine NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and lives online at http://mikeayoung.tumblr.com. In person, he lives in Santa Fe, NM.

About The Author

Mike Young is the author of three books: Sprezzatura (2014, poems), Look! Look! Feathers (2010, stories), and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (2010, poems). He publishes the free online/print literary magazine NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and lives online at http://mikeayoung.tumblr.com. In person, he lives in Santa Fe, NM.